Snugglesaur

Bup says, "Sweet Dreams!"

The three guys who write podcast

The three guys who write (though not as much as they would like) podcast...

I joined my writing buddies Jonar and Matt in a writing podcast called two guys that write.  Now that we all like my input and have fun the name has to change to the Three guys who write.  It's a lot of fun.  And sometimes it is all the writing I can get in a week, even though it isn't writing.  I'm still thinking about it.  And that obviously worked because here I am, writing late at night before bed just for a bit.

In listening to Matt explain how he can write in ten minutes I understood how I could use his method.  Moreover I saw how I was making excuses for myself to prevent any writing at all.  I think what sealed the deal for me was when Matt said, paraphrased, "Well you could write ten minutes and make it goo because you dont have any other time to write so it has to get done now, or you could wait for more time to write, which never comes."  Which made me think about how and when I write.  I dont.  Though if I did write ten minutes a day at the end of the week I would have an hour in the writing bank, which is one hour more than I would get otherwise.  My current method of complaining and making excuses hasn't gotten me very far.

So Matt, this blog post is because of you.  And Jonar too of course because he facilitated this whole idea, which gives me hope for our little podcast; if it can help me get out of a rut, maybe it can help someone else.

While I recorded the podcast Loo recognized my moment of weakness, how I could properly defend myself.  She took this moment to sit on my shins and attempt to paint my toenails.  I tried to kick her off without making too much noise, but it didn't work.  I knew that much when Jonar said, "It sounds like you are fighting a war over there Brian, are you ok?"

Towards the end of the podcast Loo started playing DOAX Beach Volleyball.  And I was distracted by the jiggle physics.  They are off in this game.  Each boob moves independently in an unnatural way that is both distracting and off putting. 

I guess that is it.  Time for bed and sleep and all that jazz.  I look forward to my ten minutes tomorrow.  I will try to have something worthwhile to cram into that ten minute block.  So... a reva derche as they say in New York.

Strong women

In a story I like my women strong of character.  It's kind of a big deal for me.  I have always been into women, which led me to take classes about feminism or feminist studies and gender and a bunch of others.  When I see a woman in a story that is stereotyped or hollywoodized I pick up on it quickly and it turns me off, not sexually, just in interest with the story.  Helpless women that wait around for their men to do something for them, passive characters like whats her face from Twilight stories, rubs me the wrong way.  I want my women to be the arbiters of their fate and I like to see them reconcile their feminism with the task they need to do.  So while they are out there kicking ass I also want to hear about love and being a mother, that struggle between being a tough chick and a mom or a lover is so much more interesting than a sexy badass girl. 

In the movie Aliens, Ripley (a female main character) lost her daughter because she was in cryosleep for too long and her daughter outlived her.  When she finds a little girl that is a survivor on this colony she takes to her like a mother would, obviously we know she lost her daughter and we know this new girl is about the same age as her daughter was the last time Ripley saw her.  In a way she needs to make up for failing her daughter, so when the Aliens get Newt, the little girl (for those who haven't seen this movie drop what you are doing and see it right now) Ripley goes into the HIVE of the aliens and rescues her before the colony explodes from nuclear meltdown.  She doesn't wait for a guy to tell her what to do, or to go in for her to rescue the girl and she doesn't leave her behind like some kind of heroic sacrifice.  She goes in there, kicks ass and escapes with Newt who calls her mommy.  We know that is what Ripley has wanted so badly that we feel it too, the story satisfies us on multiple levels.  That's desirable. I challenge you to find another movie that addresses these issues.  You need a movie where the main character is a woman, isn't a passive character, and can move between the roles of hero and woman, either as a mom or as a lover.  Firefly does this really well with Zoe the Warrior woman.  Maybe I just like that dynamic between the lethal bad ass and the soft woman, like she can be on the 'fair maiden pedestal' but she can also step off and kick ass and climb back up there, you know, like real women.

Think of women in movies today.  Like the movie Salt with Angelina Jolie.  The movie was originally made for Tom Cruise but he backed out at the last minute so they brought in Angelina Jolie.  I like that she is a bad ass spy chick, but I get a strong masculine vibe from the character because she is very direct and kicks ass like any action movie guy would.  where is her feminine wiles?  Where is her struggle to reconcile life giver to life taker?  No, no, we couldn't have any of that, she will be bad ass number one, a role which any actor  can slip into without changing the story in the slightest.

Loo made me read some of Twilight and I remember reading it and seeing this passive character.  I finally yelled at the book, "Do something!"  Than they made a movie. Now all kinds of young girls read the book and see how everything works out for the girl because she waits while things happen to her, guys fight over her and on and on.  So the message is, girls just wait for the guy to figure everything out for you. 

Ahhhh!!! 


It makes me CrAzY!   Glad I got that off my chest. 

Carry on.

Seal Team Six

I just finished Seal Team Six by Howard Wasdin.

This memoir of an elite navy SEAL sniper is well done.  He isn't a writer, but he has a story to tell and he tells it well.  I knew SEALs were bad ass dudes, but I didn't know just how badass.  He tells his story, where he came from and where he went.  What a life.  


I recommend it highly.  There is a thread throughout of him trying to help people. I think I might check out more military memoirs.  This story made humans out of heroes.

I thought I had a lot to say about this, but I guess I don't.  I guess I am interested in war and conflict and violence.  I bet everyone is though, they just don't want to admit it.  Violence is the way nature deals conflict, so when it happens right in front of you it speaks to you on an innate level.  It gets your blood pumping, kick starting your lungs to draw more air and your brain releases chemicals in response, most notably cortisol, which makes your blood coagulate.  Your brain does this in the event you lose some blood.  Than it releases dopamine to make you happy, and deaden pain and adrenaline to allow you to run or fight as it decides. 

Weird thing abour the brain, it wants to protect itself, and when it sees violence and perceives danger it protects itself.  That's when the fight or flight response kicks in. 

This is where you really get to know people, or rather get to know who a person really is.   I remember this story this guy told me about a car that flipped over on an icy mountain road. Lets call him Stan.  I know it to be true because I have seen similar things happen in front of me.  Stan sees the car lose control, slide across the road and right off the mountain and tumble down the side.  He parks near the edge and goes down to help the people.  On his way down this guy comes running up like its part of an obstacle course, he just had to get out of there.  He doesn't need Stan's help so Stan keeps going while crazy man runs up the road.  At the bottom of the mountain the car is on it's roof.  Stan lays on his belly to look inside.  There is a woman still buckled up and hanging upside down and she calmly looks over to him and says, "Have you seen my husband?  I think he got thrown out."
        "I just saw him, he is fine," Stan says.
        "He's ok?  That's great!" the woman says.  Stan tries to get her out, telling her to support herself when he unbuckles her and they crawl out together and up the mountain they go.  The woman keeps checking with Stan to make sure her husband is ok.  Stan keeps assuring her he is.  Finally they reach the top of the mountain and they see the husband walking away, and he is way up the road by now, like a half mile.  She asks where he is going.  Stan shook his head and offered her a ride to the hospital.  She gets in and they pick up the husband.  She calls out to him, "Honey!  Honey!"  And Stan sees he is crying.  He pulls up and opens the door.  The guy climbs in back with his wife.  And she kisses him all over and is over joyed he isn't dead.  That they survived.  The husband looks up in the rear view mirror and sees Stan looking at him and quickly looks away and starts sobbing.

In the hospital the wife was getting some x rays and the husband was standing next to Stan, the two were alone, and he says to Stan, "You know, I wasn't leaving her back there."  And Stan looks at him.  His face is neutral, no blame, but no belief either.  Than he adds, "I just had to clear my head."  Stan didn't believe him, but didn't want to make a scene.  He nodded.  The husband seemed happy about this, like his conscience was now clear.  The wife returned and was unhurt.  Both were ok, which is to say that the wife was ok but the husband was not.

He would forever be tortured with guilt for leaving her trapped in the car.  He was her husband, how could he leave her like that? Not knowing if she were alive or dead and just running away.  And than to keep on going...  No, he convinced himself there was something wrong with him and she deserved something better.

He tried to make problems with her so she would ask for a divorce, but where this tumble off the cliff had separated him from her, she was only drawn closer to him for having survived it together.  So he kept doing bad, being rude to her, cheating on her, treating her worse than a bad pet, and she kept taking him back and loving him despite all of it.  Finally she suggested they go to counseling. 

They had to come to terms with reality, his abandonment and her deliberate ignorance of it.  After many sessions he accepted what he had done, she was made aware of her deliberate ignorance and could not accept what he had done.  Her forced ignorance was the only thing holding them together after the crash, with that gone they divorced, a year after the crash.      


   

It's been so long.

Hi there!

I'm coming back.  I don't have much time to write anymore, so I decided to make time.  Weird concept, I know.

I forget things a lot, unless they are cool, in which case I remember specific details.  Like the surface temperature of Venus is 847 degrees Fahrenheit and since Russia was the first to send a probe to the planet there is a silver bust of Lenin on the surface somewhere that has since melted into a puddle.  I read that venus book over a year ago.

Anyway, It was bad to forget the important stuff I was supposed to do when I got home from work.  Like get groceries or important paperwork for the bank and work.  I had planned to get one of those mini tape recorder gizmos.  I could say into it, "after work pick up 40lbs of dog food."  I told this idea to loo thinking it was a good one.  She didn't think so because I would forget to rewind it and it costs money.  She got one of my dad's little calendar books and now I have several days on each page that I can write notes in.  So the days of forgetting to take out the trash and clean the cat box and the oft forgotten date night are over.  At least in theory.  I have to get into the habit of checking it and writing stuff down in it.  I already feel less stressed.

Update:  There are usually six people in our house all the time.  Three couples.  Mom and Dad, Loo and I, and Kevin and Oscar.  The house feels a lot smaller now. Add two dogs, two cats, a monitor lizard, two snakes and fish and you have a full house. 

Funny story:  My brother and his boyfriend decorated the house with hearts and pink stuff for Valentines day.  There are strings of hearts stretched all over the house.  They called me out front to the family room to ask me what I thought about the job they did.  We all had some beers on board.  I took a look at all that pink stuff and I wore a disgusted face and said, "God, this room is so GAY!"  and we all laughed.  My brother high-fived me.

Later Kev's boyfriend  and him made a cake and it was all rainbow sprinkles and cuteness.  While I was eating breakfast with Loo and Dad and Oscar I said, "Man, everything you make turns gay!"  and we all laughed.  Than loo said, "You know, Oscar made the coffee this morning."

"Oh, no," I said, "Does that mean the coffee is gay too?"

"Yeah," Oscar said, "But I like it straight!"

We all laughed at that and I had to high five him.

 The two of them were at my work getting some tires put on Kev's truck and the two of them were huddled up outside watching videos on their iPhones and one of my co workers comes up to me and says, "Hey, is that Kevin's gay boyfriend?"

"No, that's his straight boyfriend," I said.  He looked so confused.

Total lunar eclipse 6am

I woke up 30 minutes earlier than normal to see the total lunar eclipse this morning.  It was only viewable for people on the west coast and I think they said it was the last one viewable from the west coast in our lifetime. 

I stumbled over Loo and out the door, down the dark hallway and opened the door at the end.  On the other side of the door was our cat Murrs who was 'murring' loudly and trying to slip through the open door, but I closed the door before she could slip in and I stepped over her while she walked circles around my feet to get to the front door. 

It looked cold and dark outside.  It was then that I realized I forgot my shoes.  I thought about going back to get shoes and missing the total lunar eclipse, the last one in my lifetime.  I walked outside bare foot. 

The brick walkway was icy and it took me a bit of time to scan the horizon to find the moon.  I heard owls hooting in the palm trees in front of the house and when I approached to see the moon an owl leapt off the top of the tree and glided into the field behind our house.  Jerry Bruckheimer's field. 

And there, for all to see was the moon, half of which was red and clearly visible in the early morning sky.  Ideally I would have viewed it for some time to watch it change, but my feet were frozen and I was cold because I was wearing my PJs.  I walked back inside and decided to make a fire and coffee.  Now I have my coffee on my left, the fire at my back and my kitty on my right. 

This is a good way to start a Saturday morning before work.

One month has gone by and a lot has happened.

This time I mean it though. A lot has happened, life changing changes ahead.

I have been stupid-busy with work.  A bunch of people quit, were transferred, or started school.  As the only non student there I had to pick up the slack.  I had back to back 13 hour days giving me more than 40 hours a week, a lot more.  At first I didn't mind it, I zoned out and let my body do the job as my mind wandered to the stories and characters I will write about later, when I have time, when I'm not completely fried to the bone.  Tengo el cerebro frito.  But the part that was bad was coming home exhausted.  I didn't want to do anything.  Eat, sleep, repeat, that was me.  It was pretty shitty for Loo because I was so grouchy and burned out.  She wanted to do SOMETHING, anything and I was like NO!  And finally I relented and went to a bar with her friends.  I was nodding off in the middle and could barely stay awake.  Working all the time was tough on the two of us.

But the money was good, too good apparently.

On august 29th the lease was up at the place I was staying at with my two coworkers.  One of them I like the other I do not.  When it came to sign up again I was an emphatic NO.  I started looking at new places to live with Loo to get her out of her family's house.  I found places for cheap that were nice but I didn't like the idea of facing another Michigan winter.  Or any Michigan winters for that matter.  I started wondering what I was doing out here and why I had come and when I would go back.

Loo recently graduated with a degree in accounting and was ravenously looking for a job.  All day that I worked she was applying, searching and filling out applications for jobs all over. But she wasn't having much luck.  Seems like they want people with experience and don't want to pay them for it and don't want to give experience either.  I asked my uncle what to do (he is an accountant and lives back in Cali)  He said that Loo needed to be in California if she wanted to be an accountant.  There were more people and more jobs.  She started looking for jobs in California.

There were hundreds and they paid better.  Starting pay was often more than three times what I make.

She started applying there too.

Long story short we are coming home to Cali.  I want to tell you I am excited, but it seems naive to say that, or maybe temporary.  No, the feeling I have is a deeper general happiness. 

We were going to leave a week ago, but Loo checked with the University of Michigan's Migraine pain clinic (best in the country, 2 year wait for an appointment is normal, she had been on the list for a year already and had an appt for next November) and they had a cancellation on the 21st. 

That is our departure date.  Our cars are packed and we are taking all our stuff including all my books (whew!) our two rats Swiper and Shredder, and our Savannah monitor lizard Bup and his new big cage, which he hasn't used yet. It looks funny on the roof of my car.

I strapped it to the roof of my car with two ratcheting tie straps and we filled it with bulky and light weight items.  Funny story about that.  EVERYONE seems to have an opinion about how it should be strapped down and it isn't the way that I did it.  Loo's mom wants me to strap a third strap running from the front of the car to the back across the windshield and back window and rear wing.  There wasn't anything to hook it to, but that didn't seem to matter so long as it was hooked.

got to go, see ya soon!